Welcome to the June issue of the newsletter for the Forum on Religion and Ecology. We have much to share with you this month with regards to developments in the field of Religion and Ecology, including publications, conferences, events, calls for papers, and more.

The Journey of the Universe film continues to move out into the world. It is now available on Netflix, and since it went up in December, it has been rated by over 46,000 people. For more about the Journey project, visit: http://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/

John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker will be showing Journey of the Universe this summer at a number of places in England, including London (June 18, 19, and 21), Bristol (June 21), Devon (June 22 and 24), and Manchester (July 4-5). These showings will be accompanied by discussions and workshops focused on Journey - the film, book, and conversations.

We hope this newsletter supports your own work and helps you further your own engagements with the field of Religion and Ecology.

From the Psalms in the Bible to the sacred rivers in Hinduism, the natural world has been integral to the world’s religions. John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker contend that today’s growing environmental challenges make the relationship ever more vital.

This primer explores the history of religious traditions and the environment, illustrating how religious teachings and practices both promoted and at times subverted sustainability. Subsequent chapters examine the emergence of religious ecology, as views of nature changed in religious traditions and the ecological sciences. Yet the authors argue that religion and ecology are not the province of institutions or disciplines alone. They describe four fundamental aspects of religious life: orienting, grounding, nurturing, and transforming. Readers then see how these phenomena are experienced in a Native American religion, Orthodox Christianity, Confucianism, and Hinduism.

Ultimately, Grim and Tucker argue that the engagement of religious communities is necessary if humanity is to sustain itself and the planet. Students of environmental ethics, theology and ecology, world religions, and environmental studies will receive a solid grounding in the burgeoning field of religious ecology.

Reviews

“Grim and Tucker integrate vast personal experiences and serious scholarship across multiple global cultures and disciplines to produce keen, fresh insight for today’s world. A compelling, inspirational, and hopeful look at a path to a meaningful and sustainable future.” - Jane Lubchenco, Former Administrator of NOAA

“A must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of ecology, religion, and ethics, and in the role that religions could play in resolving the complex environmental concerns of today.” - Eleanor Sterling, Director, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History

“An astonishingly comprehensive view of human relations with the natural world.” - John Cobb, Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies, Claremont University

“The almost unimaginable environmental challenge humanity faces—a daunting Gordian knot of science, plus ethical and moral values—demands ways forward. Those will be found at the intersection of science and religion. Nobody understands this thicket—so filled with hope, promise and complexities—better than John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker. Ecology and Religion lights the path forward.” - Thomas E. Lovejoy, University Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University

"How wonderful to have the world's leading authorities on religion and ecology, John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker, offer this profound but accessible examination of the field just as the world's religions are entering their ecological phase. This book is more than a source of deep understanding--it is an inspiration.” - James Gustave Speth, author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy

3. “The Journey of the Universe – A New Story for Our Times” (Schumacher College Course with Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, June 23-27, 2014)

Schumacher College, The Old Postern, Dartington, Totnes, Devon, UK

June 23-27, 2014

For many years we have been looking to science, engineering, policy, law and economics to provide information to help us understand and resolve our complex environmental issues. We now have a great deal of knowledge in these areas, but we still lack the collective will to engage in long-term changes essential for the continued flourishing of our ‘Earth Community’. Now we are beginning to recognise that other types of knowledge are needed alongside this information – knowledge from the humanities, from spirituality and ethics.

In this course we will explore the Journey of the Universe – a film, a book and a series of conversations with leading scientists and environmentalists, born out of Thomas Berry’s call in 1978 for a ‘New Story’ and developed by Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim and Brian Swimme. The Journey of the Universe is a cosmological narrative that transcends the boundaries between disciplines and integrates science and values to tell the story of our Universe and its evolution.

From this story we will take a new orientation and context as we reconsider our relationship with the Earth Community, looking at the many symbolic and lived expressions of interconnection between us and how they inspire us to action. Our goal for the week is to explore how this new story can evoke the ‘Great Work’ of our time for social and environmental transformation.

On this course you will gain a fuller understanding of the epic of evolution as a context for inspiring wonder and evoking creativity. We will explore how it is possible for humans to work to enhance Earth’s life systems, looking at examples ranging from bioregionalism and transition towns to international efforts like the Earth Charter.

John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker are Directors of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University and are the Executive Producers of Journey of the Universe, which will be shown during the program.

They were students of Thomas Berry, edited his books, and collaborated with him for 35 years.

One of the greatest discoveries of the last century is that we humans are part of a vast, sacred universe that has given rise to life. Yet at the same time, humans are imperiling this life by unraveling the ecosystems that support the Earth community. To speak in this context, then, about peace, justice, and the integrity of creation would be to speak for the continuity of life in all its forms.

Some questions to be explored are: How can we bring these perspectives and movements into greater dialogue and cooperation? What are the shared moral principles that would bring these concerns together? What roles can various sectors play in this integration: education, religious communities, civil society (NGOS, non profits)?

Youth Panel of 350 and climate activists; Environmental groups and peace and justice groups join in discussion about the need for inter-group dialogue on action for climate change and related planetary concerns.

The Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale will be hosting a conference November 7-9, 2014 at Yale Divinity School in honor of Thomas Berry's 100th birthday. "Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe" will offer participants an opportunity to hear from dozens of scholars and religious practitioners on the Christian response to the Emmy Award winning film, Journey of the Universe.

This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the world’s most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on China’s physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.

Story about the birth of this volume: This multidisciplinary volume has a "Tucker and Grim character!" The story of it began with Chen Xia, a dear friend of Mary Evelyn and John, and a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 2009, when Chen Xia was teaching a course at a U.S. study abroad center in Beijing directed by Dan Smyer Yu, she introduced Dan the works of Mary Evelyn and John. Chen Xia connected Dan with Mary Evelyn and John. Dan soon began to seek funding for a religion and ecology conference in China. Finally in 2011 Dan successfully received funding from the School of Ethnology & Sociology at Minzu University of China and Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Yang Shengmin, the former Dean of the ethnology school at Minzu and Peter van der Veer, Director of the Max Planck Institute, were instrumental in making this international collaborative project possible. Throughout the preparation of the conference and the envisioned volume, Dan, as the principal organizer, sought advices from Mary Evelyn and John. Both of them generously shared their wisdoms and experiences, and also recommended James Miller of Queen's University as a co-editor of the volume. With their heart-felt advices, the conference organizers and volume editors decided to expand the study of religion and ecology further into other disciplines of social sciences and humanities, especially anthropology, ethnology and sociology. This trans-disciplinary expansion is particularly needed in the context of China as environmental issues are mostly tackled among scholars of natural and social sciences with a clear applied orientation. The conference took place in Beijing in March 2012. The "Tucker and Grim character" are shown in these aspects of the volume: an urgent sense of ecological crisis worldwide; advocating critical understandings of progress and development; exploring diverse modes of environmental sustainability from different religious traditions including those from smaller scale, indigenous societies; the effort to recover the feelings of affection and bonding with the Planet Earth from "the feeling of alienation" resulting from our exploitative relationship with the natural environment; and advancing the study of religion and ecology as "an inter-religious project."

The book sets out a clear and sustained theological response to the biggest issue of our time, providing a spur to this generation of Christians to grasp and confront these issues and call their governments to account for the sake of generations to come.

“By drawing on the vast resources of Christian spirituality and of the much more recent climate science, as well as on William Blake and Carl Schmitt among many others, Michael Northcott continues to bring alive the most implausible hybrid: a carbon theology! By reawakening the dormant meaning of incarnation, he also provides new energy for an ecological movement that could learn to thrive on the long tradition of political theology. This book helps us understand how all the outdated values of the past might be our last chance to still have a future.” ~ Bruno Latour

Before Nature caps a set of themes first brought to the fore in Santmire’s previous work, most notably the classic The Travail of Nature. Here Santmire continues the pursuit of a theology bound up with nature and its condition, especially the fragility and fervent expectation of nature’s redemption. Santmire invites readers on a theological and spiritual journey to a prayerful and contemplative knowledge of the Triune God, in which practitioners are inducted into a bountiful relationship with the cosmic and universal ministry of Christ and the Spirit uniting all of nature in a single vision of hope and anticipation.

What is the moral standing of animals according to Christian theology? In this book, Ryan Patrick McLaughlin argues that there are conflicting traditions with regard to this question. The dominant tradition maintains that animals are primarily resources that ought to be equitably distributed to the entire human community, both present and future. However, there are alternative strands of Christian thought that challenge this view. McLaughlin delineates these strands in juxtaposition to the dominant tradition in an effort to highlight its alternatives, which include the re-envisioning of the moral significance of differentiation, the image of both protological and eschatological peace between humans and animals in both ancient and modern writers, biblical passages that challenge anthropocentrism and conservationism, and the notion that the cosmos is the primordial sacrament. Collectively, these alternatives to the dominant tradition suggest that there are open spaces within which to offer direct moral concern for animals.

Religions often nurture important skills that help believers locate themselves in the world. Religious perceptions, practices, emotions, and beliefs are closely interwoven with the environments from which they emerge. Sigurd Bergmann’s driving emphasis here is to explore religion not in relation to, but as a part of the spatiality and movement within the environment from which it arises and is nurtured. Religion, Space, and the Environment emerges from the author’s experiences in different places and continents over the past decade. At the book’s heart lie the questions of how space, place, and religion amalgamate and how lived space and lived religion influence each other. Bergmann explores how religion and the memory of our past impact our lives in urban spaces; how the sacred geographies in Mayan and northeast Asian lands compare to modern eco-spirituality; and how human images and practices of moving in, with, and through the land are interwoven with the processes of colonization and sacralizing, and the practices of power and visions of the sacred, among other topics.

Environmental law has failed us all. As ecosystems collapse across the globe and the climate crisis intensifies, environmental agencies worldwide use their authority to permit the very harm that they are supposed to prevent. Growing numbers of citizens now realize they must act before it is too late. This book exposes what is wrong with environmental law and offers transformational change based on the public trust doctrine. An ancient and enduring principle, the trust doctrine asserts public property rights to crucial resources. Its core logic compels government, as trustee, to protect natural inheritance such as air and water for all humanity. Propelled by populist impulses and democratic imperatives, the public trust surfaces at epic times in history as a manifest human right. But until now it has lacked the precision necessary for citizens, government employees, legislators, and judges to fully safeguard the natural resources we rely on for survival and prosperity. The Nature's Trust approach empowers citizens worldwide to protect their inalienable ecological rights for generations to come.

The chapter on “Nature’s Trust and the Heart of Humanity” is devoted to religious and moral conceptions of trust.

Larry Rasmussen’s Earth-Honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key (Oxford University Press, 2012) has received the Nautilus Book Awards 2014 Gold Prize in the category Ecology/Environment as well as the Grand Prize for the best book across all twenty-seven categories.

The review that appeared in CHOICE, the trade journal of the American Library Association, summarized Earth-Honoring Faith this way. “Rasmussen, one of the most distinguished moral philosophers in the US, offers a comprehensive, even exhaustive, study of the need for what he elegantly calls an “earth-honoring faith.” His manifesto is for an ethic that is truly universal, meaning not just for human beings but for the whole ecosystem of which they are only a part. His claim that the human species does not have pride of place in the ecosphere will upset many traditional theistic ethicists, but Rasmussen makes his case, if not entirely successfully, by careful argument and copious citing of resources from science and religion across many traditions. He writes extremely well, with elegance and eloquence, and weaves poetry, narrative, and personal stories into a tapestry informed by keen ethical insight and analysis. His treatment of power relations in the economy and of consumerism is masterful. This book is a must for anyone interested in the environment who is not willing to settle for lazy aphorisms and superficial panaceas. Summing up: Highly recommended.”

Leslie E. Sponsel’s Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution (Praeger, 2012) was the winner in the Science category at the annual Green Book Festival in San Francisco, CA on May 17, 2014.

“This foundational book is unique in that it provides a historical, cross-cultural context for understanding and advancing the ongoing spiritual ecology revolution, considering indigenous and Asian religious traditions as well as Western ones. Most chapters focus on a single pioneer, illuminating historical context and his/her legacy, while also connecting that legacy to broader concerns.”

Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey is the adventure of 700 people trekking across the Himalayas with a call to save the planet's "3rd Pole," a glacial region now devastated by the climate chaos associated with global warming. Battling the most treacherous terrain on the planet, the trekkers spread their message of ecological compassion through human's most basic means - by walking on foot, village to village, and showing by example. Surviving harrowing injuries, illness, and starvation, they emerge with nearly half a ton of plastic litter strapped to their backs, triggering an historic green revolution across the rooftop of the world.

12. Blessed Tomorrow: Interfaith Coalition on Climate Change

Blessed Tomorrow is a coalition of diverse religious partners united under a call to be faithful stewards of creation. As people of faith in America, they are committed to engaging their communities and calling on fellow leaders to support practical solutions to create a healthy future for us all. As a key initiative of MomentUs and ecoAmerica, Blessed Tomorrow provides a program by people of faith, for people of faith, offering ideas, tools, resources, and language that are familiar, compelling, and effective for engaging congregations in climate solutions.

This graduate program is aimed at students who wish to integrate the study of environmental issues and religious communities in their professional careers and for those who wish to study the cultural and ethical dimensions of environmental problems.

Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology has as its focus the relationships between religion, culture and ecology world-wide. Articles discuss major world religious traditions, such as Islam, Buddhism or Christianity; the traditions of indigenous peoples; new religious movements; and philosophical belief systems, such as pantheism, nature spiritualities, and other religious and cultural worldviews in relation to the cultural and ecological systems. Focusing on a range of disciplinary areas including Anthropology, Environmental Studies, Geography, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Sociology and Theology, the journal also presents special issues that center around one theme.